Memorandum

To:  English 101 On-line Students, Section 79990

From:  Prof.  Debra Zednik, debra.zednik@canyons.edu

Greetings all, and welcome to English 101.  Please read this orientation memo carefully to best determine if this course will be right for you.

Note: this memorandum is not a course syllabus.  The syllabus provides all necessary course information and can be viewed and/or downloaded from the Blackboard course site once the semester begins. 

This course is 100% online and will begin on  Feb 7, 2011.   The course will not be available until this date, so please wait until then to try to log in. 

On the First Day: 

To log in to our course, you will need your student ID number.  The word “student” is your password.  You will need to log on and finish the first assignment (a Discussion Board posting) before 11 PM on Monday, so I will not drop you from the class. (This is the same rule as the “first day no show” for F2F classes. It means: If a student does not show up for his/her first day class, he/she will be dropped by the Instructor.) The first assignment is relatively easy to do. If you complete your first assignment in time, I know that you have logged in and know how to use the basics of BB.

You will also need an email address.so that others in the class will be able to communicate with you.  This must be your own email address and not one that you share with anyone else.  This is to comply with Federal student privacy laws. 

There are no face-to-face meetings. However, it follows the schedule for the Spring semester. The Blackboard course site cannot be accessed until the first day of the semester. This is not a self-paced course and requires a tremendous amount of discipline, organization, and participation several days a week.  Deadlines are followed strictly and no allowances are made for late postings and submissions.

COC offers support for online students at the TLC.  (259-7800 Ext. 3349).  If you have issues or difficulties that cannot be resolved by the support offered by TLC, please contact me immediately via email.  Normally, if you email me, during weekdays, Monday through noon, Friday, you can expect to receive a reply or an acknowledgement of your email from me within 24-48 hours. However, emails to me should be extremely rare after the course begins, because all course-related activities or questions are conducted on the course website, NOT via email.

Here is the Catalogue Description for this course:

English 101 builds expository writing and critical reading skills through the composition of well-organized, full-length essays containing properly documented evidence and the analysis and evaluation of college-level readings.

Here are the Student Learning Outcomes for this course:

By the end of the course, you should be able to do the following:

1. Compose persuasive, well-organized, grammatically correct full-length essays, synthesizing properly documented and relevant research and other evidence to develop and support a unified thesis.
2. Analyze and critically evaluate college-level texts for argument, structure, and rhetorical strategies.

Required Texts: Students are required to buy the textbooks for the class. NO exceptions! All major assignments will be based on these texts. 

Beyond Words: Cultural Texts for Reading and Writing, 2^nd edition

Authors/Editors: John Ruszkiewicz, Daniel Anderson, and Christy Friend

ISBN: 978-0-205-57662-3

Publisher: Longman   

Everything’s An Argument, 4^th edition

Authors: Andrea Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz

List Price: cost pending (3rd was $39.75)

ISBN: 0–312–44749–3

Publisher: Bedford/St. Martins

Rules for Writers, 6^th edition

Author: Diana Hacker

List Price: $28.75

ISBN: 0-312-40685-1

Publisher: Bedford/St. Martins

Some Basic Information:

·        This is a 100% online class, but please do not take this class if you are too busy to take a regular one, as it requires just as much—if not more—time and effort.  You will be expected to complete the same amount of work that is required in a face-to-face class (‘class time’ plus ‘homework’).  Therefore, expect to spend 8-10 hours a week on this course.

·         You will need to have ready access to current word document creating software (Microsoft Word preferred).  You will need an up-to date version of an internet browser.  You need to be computer literate, well-skilled in basic document creation and handling.  At the very least, you should know how to copy and paste from one document to another and how to attach documents to emails.  You must know how to set page margins and fonts in Microsoft Word not only to meet MLA format specifications, but also to allow me to determine whether or not your writing assignments meet minimum page requirements.  In addition, you must know how to save files as .rtf (rich text format) documents that are NOT ‘zipped’ or compressed.

If you have concerns about the above-described skills, consider enrolling in Counseling 070, “Becoming a Successful Distance Learning Student.” 

http://www.canyons.edu/offices/distance_learning/info/COUNS070.asp

If you are not sure of what questions you may have, you can evaluate whether or not you are well-suited for an online course at the following site.  http://www.canyons.edu/offices/distance_learning/info/Assessments.asp

I look forward to working with all of you!  See you on line! 

dlz